The general gist? A minor update somewhere this year, but the real update won't come until 2014. In the meantime, we'll have to... "Resuming..." ...settle for CardDAV/CalDAV support, some additional HTML5 support, and fixes for Xbox Music metadata. We were promised regular updates and an early access program for enthusiasts - but Microsoft failed to deliver, once more. For all intents and purposes, thanks... "Resuming..." ...to the switch to the Windows NT kernel, the Windows Phone we're using today has very little additional functionality to offer over what we were using on WP7 release day. I've been a Windows Phone user since WP7 release day, but Microsoft has lost me.

I'm glad they are, and that Herb Sutter is so passionate about moving C++ forward. The pick up in speed in the adoption of the C++11 and beyond standards are encouraging too.

What is also encouraging is how they map a lot of the C++ intrinsics to WinRT ABI stuff, like a lot of their foundational collection classes map to STL collections cleanly. Same with their (yet another) string format.

On a more general note, I just think the NT kernel porting effort to the phone proved more chaotic than is let on, and some terrible program management screwed up some ship dates.

It really felt like WP8 barely eeked across the finish line, the SDK was months late for example. Given these issues, The Verge is reporting that Microsoft had specific issues with getting their new chipset support baked into the OS, especially around unlocked carrier-free devices being identified on the network.

Hopefully now that the guy who ran WP is in charge of Windows as a whole we'll see much more resources dedicated to the mobile effort. For a while it seemed WP was treading water despite Windows and not because of it.